Steve Stoute Launches New Music Venture With Silicon Valley Investment

Steve Stoute is changing the game for up-and-coming artists with a brand new music venture called UnitedMasters. The veteran record executive's newly-launched venture will be helping rising artists get their music on major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music.

According to WSJ, UnitedMasters was launched by Stoute with $70 million in funding from Silicon Valley investments, including companies such as Alphabet Inc., Andreessen Horowitz and 21st Century Fox, with NewsCorp sharing common ownership. The new venture is based in San Francisco, Calif. and has been building a 40-person team that will help artists market themselves to reach fans, as well as help brand themselves to certain types of fan bases.

“We want to build a business that helps musicians, which is my passion, and also helps brands find a much more specific way of investing their money in the category of music,” Stoute said in a statement.

UnitedMasters works with artists by having them pay what the Translation founder describes as the “the lowest price for distribution” to have their music streamed on music sites on the Internet. The company will then pay the streaming companies following the songs being played, while also, in some cases, collect a small percentage of what artists earned from their songs being streamed.

There may also be scenarios where UnitedMasters gets a cut of what is made through the artist's merchandising and ticket sales, but the creatives will still own the rights to their own music.

Artists are able to sign up for accounts with the venture, but there is a team that will be scouting YouTube and Soundcloud in search of what they consider to be promising talent to invest in. So far, 1,000 artists are working with the company.

Congratulations to Steve Stoute and UnitedMasters on their new venture.